The Settlers (DS) is a complete mess

From my post on gaf:

I’ve never played a console game in worse condition than this one.

First of all, the framerate is horrendous. Sub-10s at points, causing you to have to hold your stylus down over something to select it as the framerate catches up.

On top of that, the game has crashed on me 3 times in one hour. Hard crash.

Fantastic QA there, Ubi.

A real shame, too… otherwise it’s a great port of Settlers 2. Great interface complete with floating windows, a quick switch to flip-flop windows between the two screens, and faithful graphics.

Seeing how EB is the partner publisher in this travesty, I’m actually going to try to return the opened game for a full refund.

This is defective. Plain and simple. Not a defective copy, buy a blatantly defective game that simply doesn’t work on the DS. 3 hard crashes in an hour. Unbelievable.

Good luck with that. Please post (and maybe even video!) your attempts.

Settlers DS got terrible reviews. The Gamerankings average is 43% which is apparently quite generous. Eurogamer gave it 1/10, calling it “one of the most clumsy and broken games to receive a commercial release”.

Well… I’m going to mail it back to them with a letter explaining I want my money back.

Try to return it to a B&M EB? I’d rather sit in line at the DMV.

Sad epitaph (perhaps) for what was once one of Blue Byte’s best franchises.

See? Blue Byte should’ve listened to me and done an Incubation 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_(computer_game) I think that would’ve been good for PSP and DS. I think I ultimately got about 1,000 people (fwiw, you probably need 100 times that to get any publisher to care) to sign an Incubation 2 petition I set up back in 1998 (now defunct): http://z2.invisionfree.com/Incubation_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13

They just needed to wait another 10 years. :D

I love BlueByte, but I hated Incubation. It was just a puzzle game with a tactical squad-based game facade.

The man speaks the truth.

Yeah, Incubation was weak.

Screw you guys. Incubation was fun. There have been much worse tactical, puzzly games. Hell, there have been plenty that cannot get either right. Incubation did it with a certain charm and with enough little items, features and doodads to make it enjoyable killing and puzzling.

In fact, I am going to say it again, Screw you guys.

P.S. Poor Settlers. I think it may be time to put 'er down.

I agree with Tyjenks. Screw your squad-based tactical snobbery!

Incubation was great. Nothing wrong with puzzle games, and the fact that it wasn’t trying to be the second coming of X-Com is not a flaw.

Commandos was a puzzle game and I loved the first one with a double steroid cheezeburger on top!

Word on that Damien. Although, it seems like Altar Interactive is building a whole empire on making failed X-Com impersonators.

I don’t know if any of the recent X-Com wannabe’s do this, but Incubation had a nice feature that I haven’t seen since. During the enemy turn, you would occasionally see the action of the turn from the alien’s viewpoint, not unlike the stalker-cam that you sometimes see in horror movies. While it broke the “I have no idea where those shots are coming from” fog of war that x-com had, it was exciting to see your team from the other side while the aliens were shooting.

Also with something like 5000 copies sold in the US, Incubation is collectible.

5,000 copies, one expansion, no sequels and 10 years ago and it is still brought up. It must have done something right. I had forgotten about the ‘through the eyes of the enemies’ shots. See, there were a lot of little things that made it more than just a puzzle-y X-Com copycat.

Man, my Wilderness Missions expansion is looking at me. I wonder how many hoops I would have to go through to get it to run.

Given that getting a sealed copy from them in the first place is nigh on impossible, what the fuck business do they have refusing to take back opened copies … sorry … rant … went to get the DS game High School Musical (9 yr old is super into it) called local EB

Do you have it?
Yes.
New?
Yes.
Can you hold it for me?
Sure.

And I go down and the box is on the shelf with a nice gummy price sticker on it and the cart & manual are in an envelope. They go to put a round sticker on it and I say “I thought you had a new one” and he says “this is new”. I said “so all of your games arrive in separate packages already open and you have to assemble them - unlike that sealed copy there (points to some XBOX game called Bio-something-something)?”

Sorry … know that is about the zillionth time someone has bitched about this, but jeez, I don’t care but if I’m getting it as a gift for one of my kids I want them to get to rip the plastic!

Oh … I have this coming to me from Goozex … this hasn’t exactly raised my excitement level!

Damn, I was really looking forward to this, as Settlers 2 is my clear favorite in the Settlers series. I guess there is no hope they’ll fix and reprint this.

Not like you hadn’t been warned.

-Julian

Warned? From who?

Me?

-Julian